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Originally Posted by Ephirith
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Don't be like that. Why did he disagree with the celebration? What is the difference between all the other celebrations he bakes cakes for, and that one? It was the gayness.
This would be illegal under the Civil Rights Act, just as the homo example would be illegal if homosexuality were a protected class.
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Should the baker be forced to make a cake for a man celebrating his infidelity?
Laws are force and they should only be used when necessary. Anti-miscegenation laws existed, and the general political climate created a situation that was absolutely untenable for minorities, and so the law stepped in. The consequence of that law is that people lost the right to refuse service on the basis of a protected class. Imagine that there was no racism in the 60's. Imagine if only 1 out of 10,000 merchants would not provide services to any of the protected classes. Would the civil rights act be necessary? Laws are about striking a balance. Unpopular speech must be protected the most precisely because it is unpopular. It is only when that unpopular speech causes real problems whose harm is greater than the harm of eliminating that speech should the law be passed.
Additionally, we're not talking about vital services such as food, housing, and medicine which is largely what drove the conversations vis a vis denial of service because the institutions denying the service were often the only providers available effectively shutting minorities out of those essentials. We're talking about non-essentials like wedding photography and cakes. This is a huge difference in scale, and law and policy are unwieldy tools. Unintended consequences are always afoot, and the hammer doesn't need to be pulled out because a few people are denied cakes.
Morally, most people would believe it's wrong to refuse service on the basis of interracial marriage, and it is also illegal. Anti-miscegenation today is a legal, moral, and ethical aberration. Refusing service to a gay marriage (or celebration of infidelity, or an abortion, or whatever hotbutton issue), however, is not a moral or ethical aberration in our time and place. It is a moral norm. Therein lies the difference.
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Originally Posted by iruinedyourday
if someone is screaming at me about something without trying to explain it to me while simultaneously chastising me about it and saying I want the government to force people what to vote for - over a conversation about civil rights, all while I ask him to be more clear
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I've explained it to you several times. You want to talk about government policy and the incredibly nuanced field of constitutional law, yet you can't even bother to do five minutes of cursory research? I've done more than my part to break the concept down for you. If you can't understand the idea that speech is more than words, then you have no business discussing politics much less the practice of constitutional law.